Stories from the Body #1
performance-installation
Blue Mountains City Art Gallery
2019
Photos taken by David Brazil and Silversalt photography.
Title: Stories from the Body #1
Medium: steel, aluminum mesh, paper, cardboard, piping conduits, arduino, servo motors
Size: 3m x 1.2m
Concept: WeiZen Ho
Bracket design; bespoke steel engineering & fabrication: Brad Allen-Waters
3-D design: Horst Kiechle
Material design, research & creative dvlpmt, kinetic-electronic sound design & construction, process facilitator: Michael Petchkovsky
Special thanks to Alan Schacher and Megan Blaxland
This process has involved an expansion of the performance motif and image reimagined from Malaysian folkloric entities in Stories from the Body #1 (first performed in 2012) into a performance-sculptural installation designed for the group exhibition titled with every breath, curated by Rilka Oakley for the Blue Mountains City Gallery. A big part of the building took place at THE SLAB in Hazelbrook, thanks to Brad Allen-Waters and Miriam Williamson.
The Stories from the Body #1 is the first of a performance series, a lifework that attempts to retrace lineages that have been disrupted, as a result of migration, from the South Fujian Province of China to Java, Singapore and Malaysia. Coming from the premise that all of human living is performed, Ho activates a process of uncovering, reclaiming and reimagining through her body and its voice; an expression of how an ancestral template is embedded within her physiological being.
The hybrid archetype I am working with in Stories from the Body #1 is a re-imagined combination of puyong and pontianak from the Malaysia folk-lore...
Stories from the Body #1 was first performed in Indonesia during 2014 at Arts Island Festival in Klungkung (Bali), Kediri (East Java), Undisclosed Territory#8 Performance Art Festival in Solo and Bedog Arts Festival in Yogyakarta. This puyong-pontianak entity was then incorporated into one of the scenes for Palimpsest Performance #1 at Woodford Academy, The Blue Mountain's oldest surviving building. In 2016, SFTB #1 was re-embodied and adapted for a site near the ferry wharf of Ogijima Island, as part of Setouchi Triennale Art Festival in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan’s Setouchi Region.
Other artists exhibiting in with every breath are Honi Ryan, Sarah Breen Lovett, Cherine Fahd, Karen Golland, Anne Bond, Rachael Wenona Guy & Leonie Van Eyk, Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig, Pamela Pirovic, Julie Rrap, Abi Tariq, Marty Walker and Hayley West.